by James Moore
The Goddard Arms, Swindon, Wiltshire, where Frances Priscilla Hunter was murdered in 1914. (© James Moore)
The victim was found dying in a coalhouse at the back of the hotel. There were two bullet wounds in her face. White was standing over Frances’ body with the gun still in his hand. He said, ‘Now justice will be done.’ A policeman and doctor were called, but Frances was said to have died within minutes.
Upon White’s arrest, several letters were found on him which indicated that the crime had been premeditated. In one of them he spoke of how ‘I have been ruined by my sweetheart.’ To the girl’s father, Richard, he wrote, ‘You ought to have a bullet put through you, instead of Frances. You are as much to blame as she is. You have killed two lives with the price of your silence.’
On 28 May the case was brought before the Wiltshire Assizes. White’s defence team argued that he was in a perturbed state of mind when he found out that his idol was not what she seemed. The jury didn’t buy the excuse. White was found guilty but with a plea for mercy on account of his youth. White was nevertheless given the death sentence and on hearing his sentence was said to have been in a ‘state of collapse’. He practically had to be carried out of the dock. A petition to the Home Secretary for a reprieve fell on deaf ears and in the end White appeared to welcome his fate. In a letter written from his prison cell he said, ‘I would have chosen death. I shall go like a soldier and a man … Remember me, but not my shame.’ White was hanged on 15 June 1914 at Winchester prison. Before he died, White sent a bunch of flowers to Frances’ funeral with an inscription that read, ‘I kissed her good-bye. Earth’s troubles are over; for her heaven will be best.’
Interestingly, the crime echoed one that had occurred in another Swindon pub eleven years earlier. On 18 September 1903 Esther Swinford, a 19-year-old barmaid at The Ship on Westcott Place, was shot. On that occasion the killer had been a spurned lover. Edward Richard Palmer was furious that Esther had broken off their engagement after she had discovered how he’d frittered away some of her hard-earned wages. On the evening of the murder, 24-year-old Palmer had walked into The Ship, ordered a bottle of Bass, then fired his revolver, shooting Esther through the heart. When the landlord appeared in the bar he told him, ‘I done it, I loved the girl.’
At his trial, Palmer’s defence tried to suggest that there had been some impropriety on the part of Esther, a claim which was dismissed by the prosecution. Palmer was hanged at Devizes prison on 17 November 1903. The pub where the killing took place has since closed but a memorial to Esther, paid for by locals touched by her death, can still be seen at the town’s Radnor Street Cemetery.
LOCATIONS: The Goddard Arms, No. 1 High Street, Swindon, SN1 3EG, 01793 619090, www.goddardarms.co.uk
A LANDLORD MURDERED IN HIS BED, 1921
The Swan Inn, Talke, Staffordshire
The Swan Inn is located in a prominent position at the top of a hill in the sleepy community of Talke, Staffordshire, originally known as ‘Talk o’ th’ Hill’. Along with a smattering of other pubs in the village, The Swan has been open since before 1800. The Swan served not only the locals but also traffic ferrying north and south between the Potteries and the industrial towns of Lancashire. In 1921, the landlord of the pub was 54-year-old Walter Hulse who ran the hostelry with his wife, Mary, and their two teenage children. Walter also ran a 40-acre farm and had a milk business.
On the evening of Thursday, 1 December, Mary Hulse had locked up the Swan as usual and was in bed upstairs at the pub when, at 3.45 a.m., she felt something brush her hand. She thought it was a mouse and barely opened her eyes. A few moments later Walter sat bolt upright, crying out, ‘Hello, who’s there?’ Someone was moving around in the darkness of the room. Suddenly a shot rang out and Walter fell back, dead. He had been hit full in the face and his brains blown out. As Mary lay beside him, utterly terrified, she heard the murderer running down the stairs and slamming the door on his way out. Drenched in her husband’s blood, she screamed for help and as she did so one man’s name came into her head: James Edward Linney. She had, she felt, recognised the departing footsteps as his. How did she know? Linney walked with a limp.
Linney was a 39-year-old father of one. Until a week before the murder, he had been employed by Walter to do odd jobs and look after his cows. He had also lived at The Swan until February 1921 when he’d got married. Linney therefore knew his way around the passageways of the old, gaslit pub and where the gun and cartridges with which Walter was killed were stored. Indeed he had been allowed to use it on several occasions. Linney was also known to have a grudge against Walter who, he alleged, owed him money for work he’d done. However, if Linney was the murderer, he certainly behaved calmly on the morning after the killing. He was one of the village folk who assembled outside The Swan watching the comings and goings of the police during that day.
Detectives found that the hotel cashbox, containing £30, was still on a chair in the Hulses’ bedroom where it was always kept at night. There were no useful fingerprints but the window of the pub’s snug at the rear of the building was found unlatched and there was dirt on the sill. This, said Mary, was often used by Linney as a way of entering the locked building when he had come home late during the time he was living there. The double-barrelled sporting gun with which Walter had been shot was found at the bottom of the pub’s stairs. When the police went to Linney’s house that morning, his wife, Ruby, maintained that he had been with her all night.
At 7 p.m. on the Saturday evening, Inspector Williams and PC Jones went to arrest Linney at his home, about 50yds from The Swan. He walked with a limp and was very deaf, so the inspector wrote down the usual caution on a piece of paper and handed it to him. He was subsequently charged with murder in Newcastle-under-Lyme. Linney found it difficult to follow the proceedings at the magistrates’ court, at one point saying, ‘I am as deaf as a stone wall.’
In the legal proceedings that followed throughout that December, a picture emerged of a disgruntled man. Local labourer Martin Payton told how Linney had recently threatened to put a fork through his former boss, and even Linney’s own niece said that in the week of the murder he vowed to ‘have his whack out of’ Walter before the weekend. A miner told how, three months before the killing, he had heard Linney threatening to shoot his employer after he was stopped 5s.
Constable Jones gave evidence that he had passed Linney’s house on the morning of the murder and saw a bright light in his window. In a search of Linney’s home, nothing had been found. But at 7.30 a.m. on the Friday the accused had also been seen by two witnesses acting furtively in a field behind his house. He had asked George Ollerhead, ‘What is the matter with the boss?’ Looking under a stone behind the house on the Monday morning, Jones found two spent cartridge cases concealed there. They matched the unused ones found in a kitchen drawer at The Swan. A Mrs Burnip, who lived next door to Linney, told how he had complained to her on the day before the murder that he had no money or food.
At Linney’s trial, held at the Stafford Assizes in February 1922, Linney pleaded not guilty. He said that Walter Hulse had actually offered to give him his job back on the day before the murder, so he had no motive to kill him. He also maintained that he had not been out on the night in question and had slept downstairs in his house, next to his wife. He did not get up until 4.45 a.m. when he went into his garden. He claimed that the first he knew of the death was when he was told by a neighbour.
Much depended on the alibi given to Linney by his wife, Ruby. She said that on the night in question the couple’s baby had been ill and that was why they had all slept downstairs by the fire. She had been awake all night and therefore knew that her husband had been asleep on the floor of their house at the time the murder was supposed to have been committed. She also said that she had watched him go out into the garden that morning, but that he had not tampered with any stones.
During the trial, there was an enquiry from the jury as to whether there had been any life insurance policies
on Walter Hulse’s life, and it turned out that there had been. The implication here was clearly that Walter’s 18-year-old son, also called Walter, might somehow be implicated. On the morning of the murder, after hearing his mother’s screams, he had calmly dressed in formal attire, including a tie, before going to find help, which seemed a little strange. But the judge told the jury that there was nothing to suggest that Walter’s own family had been involved in the crime. After fifty-five minutes, the jury returned and acquitted Linney. The police never identified any other suspects in the case and the murder remains unsolved.
If Linney thought life back in Talke would carry on as normal, he was much mistaken. Many of the locals still felt that he was guilty and he struggled to find work. In 1927, now with three children, he walked out on his family and was never seen again. Walter Hulse was buried in the graveyard of St Martin’s church next to The Swan.
In November 1922 there was a strange postscript to the case when two dressmakers from Talke, Clara Jones, 30, and Alice May Jones, 28, appeared at the Stafford Assizes accused of sending letters demanding money with menaces to poor Mary Hulse. Alice Jones told the court, ‘I did it under the spirit of Spiritualism. It was impossible to do otherwise.’ She alleged that the dead Mr Hulse had been speaking to her for the ‘last six months, and it has ruined my health.’ Alice also claimed to know the real identity of the killer – because the dead man had told her. Both women were sentenced to eighteen months’ hard labour.
LOCATIONS: The Swan Inn, Swan Bank, Talke, Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire, ST7 1PS, 01782 499 171, www.swan-inn-pub.co.uk
DEATH AT THE SAVOY, 1923
The Savoy Hotel, London
The sumptuous Savoy Hotel on London’s Strand was built by the impresario Richard D’Oyly Carte with the proceeds of Gilbert and Sullivan operas. But the hotel, which opened in August 1889, was also the setting for a real life drama that was just as outlandish as anything the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company had staged. The shooting of a 22-year-old Egyptian playboy in 1923 was anything but a mystery. It was plain who had pulled the trigger. But the court case that followed still captivated millions and ended in a surprise verdict.
In its 125-year history, the Savoy has entertained guests as varied and illustrious as Edward VII, Charlie Chaplin and the Beatles. But it has also had its fair share of controversy. In 1895, at Oscar Wilde’s trial, male prostitutes testified that the writer had entertained them in room 361 of the hotel. The judge in the case famously observed, ‘I know nothing about the Savoy, but I must say that in my view chicken and salad for two at 16 shillings is very high.’ Then, in 1918, the actress Billie Carleton was found dead in her Savoy hotel room at the tender age of 22. She had died from a drug overdose.
Yet, among its raft of exotic guests, it would be hard to find residents as wild or eccentric as Egyptian Prince Ali Kamel Fahmy Bey, a 22-year-old millionaire and his sultry French wife, Marguerite. The self-styled prince, actually the son of a wealthy engineer, had a reputation for extravagance and arrogance. Marguerite was ten years his senior. She was an impulsive, beautiful divorcee who had begun an affair with Fahmy in 1922 in Paris, then married him in Egypt.
From the outset, the marriage had been an odd one. She was a former high-class prostitute who may well have had an affair with the future Edward VIII. To wed Fahmy, she had become a Muslim, though he had agreed to let her wear Western-style dress. From the day of their nuptials in December 1922 the couple had battled constantly.
At the beginning of July 1923, along with a chauffeur, secretary, valet and maid, this odd pair travelled to London and checked into a plush suite at the Savoy. But none of its features, which included marbled bathrooms and silk sheets, appeared to lighten the mood of the Fahmys.
The afternoon of 9 July was a heavy, humid one. And at lunch in the Savoy’s restaurant the oppressive nature of the Fahmys’ relationship was soon on public display. A row broke out, with Marguerite threatening divorce. When the conductor of the orchestra in the restaurant asked Madame Fahmy if she would like anything particular played for her, she retorted, ‘My husband is going to kill me in 24 hours and I am not very anxious for music.’
That evening the couple went to see a performance of a play called The Merry Widow, a title that would become painfully appropriate. The couple continued to quarrel, this time over Marguerite’s plans to go to Paris for an operation on her haemorrhoids. Fahmy wanted her to stay and have the operation in London. At dinner Marguerite picked up a wine bottle and shouted at Fahmy, ‘You shut up or I will smash this over your head.’ Fahmy replied, ‘If you do, I’ll do the same to you.’
By the time the couple went up to their suite in the early hours the weather had finally broken – a violent thunderstorm was raging outside. Things also came to a head in suite No. 41 on the hotel’s fourth floor. At 2.30 a.m. the night porter, John Beattie, was passing with some luggage. Suddenly Ali Fahmy stormed through the double doors shouting at him, ‘Look at my face, look what she has done.’ Madame Fahmy came behind him, gesturing at her own face. Neither seemed particularly hurt. But, as Beattie moved on round the corner three shots suddenly rang out and a woman screamed. Beattie ran back to the suite just in time to see Marguerite throwing a smoking gun to the floor. The body of Fahmy was slumped against a wall in the corridor. There was a wound to his temple and his brains were already spilling out. Beattie sent for help. When managers arrived, Marguerite was bending over Fahmy’s body, cradling his head and crying, ‘Qu’est ce que j’ai fait, mon cher’, or, ‘What have I done my dear?’ Shortly afterwards she turned to one of the stunned hotel staff who had rushed to the scene, saying, ‘I’ve lost my head, I’ve shot him!’ Fahmy died soon after being taken to hospital.
Marguerite Fahmy, who shot her husband dead in the Savoy Hotel. (© Getty Images)
The Savoy Hotel, London, as it is today. (© James Moore)
As shocking as the incident was, and as glamorous as the couple were, the case seemed an open and shut one. There was, at least, no doubt that Madame Fahmy had shot her husband. She was duly arrested and charged with murder. An inquest jury returned a verdict of wilful murder and she was committed for a full trial which opened at the Old Bailey on 10 September 1923.
Defence counsel Sir Edward Marshall Hall soon managed to turn the case on its head in a spectacular performance that cashed in on the casual racism of his day. Marshall Hall was the same man who had sensationally got the artist Robert Wood off a charge of murder in 1907 (see here). This time he managed to present Marguerite as the victim. He portrayed her as a defenceless white woman who had been treated cruelly by an ‘oriental’ and highlighted the ‘unnatural acts’ to which Marguerite had been subjected during their marriage. She had referred to these in a consultation about her haemorrhoids with the Savoy’s doctor earlier in the trip. Fahmy, he said, had tried to strangle his wife on the night of his death. She had only grabbed the pistol out of self-defence. It was also claimed that Marguerite had no idea that the Browning semi-automatic pistol which she fired was actually loaded – even though it was her own. She claimed never to have fired a gun before and simply lost her mind when the pistol surprised her by going off. On 14 September, after just an hour’s deliberation the jury acquitted Marguerite on the grounds of self-defence. She walked free and lived in Paris until her death in 1971.
LOCATIONS: The Savoy Hotel, Strand, London, WC2R 0EU, 020 7836 4343, www.fairmont.com
THE FOREIGN FLING THAT PROVED FATAL, 1924
The Blue Anchor Hotel, Byfleet, Surrey; The Hotel Russell, Russell Square, London
With his florid moustache, bushy beard and eccentric air, Jean-Pierre Vaquier was not the sort of exotic guest that The Blue Anchor Hotel, in the sleepy town of Byfleet, Surrey, ordinarily attracted. The flamboyant French inventor was ostensibly in the country to peddle a new sausage-making machine. Yet Vaquier’s stay at The Blue Anchor would not end up enhancing its reputation as a place to stay. Instead he would stand trial for the murder of its owner. And the sor
did details surrounding his crime would shock not only this leafy suburban enclave but the whole nation as a tale of adultery and skulduggery emerged.
By January 1924, the humble red-bricked Blue Anchor had a new landlord, Alfred George Poynter Jones. The 37-year-old First World War veteran had been married to his wife Mabel since 1906 and they had two children together. But the couple’s union appears to have run into troubled financial and emotional waters after the war. Alfred was rather too fond of the drink he sold at the hotel. And Mabel ran a local catering business which had gone bust, leaving her facing bankruptcy and suffering from a nervous breakdown.
Mabel’s doctor recommended she take a break. And, while Alfred stayed behind to mind The Blue Anchor, Mabel found herself on holiday, all alone in the glamorous resort of Biarritz in south-west France. In her vulnerable state it was perhaps no surprise when she fell for the charms of the 45-year-old Vaquier. He had been a telephonist during the 1914–18 war and was carrying out wireless demonstrations at the Hotel Victoria where she was staying. Despite the fact that he spoke no English and she spoke barely any French they appear to have begun a relationship via a translation dictionary. For Mabel, her liaison with the suave Vaquier may have been intended as nothing more than a passionate romantic interlude from the plodding pace of her life in a satellite town in Surrey, married to an alcoholic. Yet for Vaquier his love for Mabel became all-consuming.
The pair’s fling was suddenly interrupted when Alfred sent a telegram saying that he was sick. Mabel began making her way home via Bordeaux and Paris. But Vaquier went with her. She arrived back in England on 8 February, and the next day her French lover followed, having told Mabel that he was planning to market his new sausage making machine in London.